ep 1 the opening of the show seems to strongly hint at the themes we’ll see around meaning and why people do what they do it seems like the strength of this show is very much going to be its characters. already we see a ton of illustration of smile, peco, and kong. smile seems to simply not want to or not feel emotion, obviously in contrast to peco’s much more playful and carefree nature. ‘hard work is for chumps with no talent’ lol. really interesting idea here, very much reminds me of how myself and friends used to see school. like if you had to work hard that was almost undesirable bc it meant you weren’t naturally talented enough. people would almost compete on how little they could get away with. i really liked kong’s listening scene. i honestly could hear what they were describing after paying a bit more attention to it. the aggressive hit followed by the slower chop i found it interesting that kong could immediately tell smile was holding back. i wonder why smile doesn’t play as well as he could against peco. interestingly it seems the teachers couldn’t tell, and just assumed peco was better. but kong seems to think smile is a level above, at least enough to challenge himself, even though he 11-0’d peco kong’s backstory of ‘one slip up’ causing him to end up in japan (??) is interesting. he seems to think peco just isn’t talented? that one line about ‘its a shame nobody instilled in him [smile] fighting spirit. but perhaps its more of a shame to believe you have talent when you dont (paraphrased)’ also the show is 11 episodes lol i like the animation style. its very hand drawn and distinct i wonder what the point of the repeated ‘next stop? the one after’ is. maybe its meant to be something about how peco and smile differ in temperament. peco is maybe a bit more impatient, focused on the next thing. but smile is more patient. the mean character who got demoted seems boring so far but maybe won’t be as obviously flat later not sure what to make of the teachers insane shots all around though i can’t really articulate any specific ones as much as i might like
online discussion notes (some ambiguity about Kong’s line at the end of the episode. The subs say “maybe it’s more of a pity to believe in a talent you don’t have”, however his line is more directly translated as: “perhaps it’s someone like me who is full of confidence but has no talent who is truly pitiable”.) this seems really important if true. very much recontextualizes kong in the way he sees himself relative to smile. its less of a snide remark on talent and more of a self deprecation on seeing himself as not even that talented, but overly confident (duh i just repeated the line) im reminded of the line about ‘holding back is disrespectful to your opponent’. its an interesting way of seeing games. some would say its more fun for everyone to play down to the opponents level.
ep 2 i really like the ending song of this show tsukimoto focused episode tsukimoto claims to play for fun, its hard to know how true this is from how emotionless he is i kind of resonate with him. he seems to have realized you can’t get hurt if you don’t try. if you accept defeat as soon as you see it you can’t be disappointed clearly the sensei has some amount of ping pong experience. he’s actually quite good, if not for his body failing him. some sort of connection to the US i find it interesting that his first instinct was to play nice and try to pamper tsukimoto. maybe to win him over by showing his commitment then yelling at him didn’t work. obviously smile would just retreat im not sure what smile’s trauma with sitting in the locker is. i want to say that smile has learned resilience in the shell. there’s nothing there and its restricted, but as he says its safe. its calm in there. more evidence of tsukimoto being very good from the dragon guy. he seems to think tsukimoto can’t challenge him anymore, and that the school he’s at isn’t good enough. specifically it seems that his school kind of is tailored to his playstyle, passive. the reaction time thing he mentioned almost seems to imply that variation theme we’ve been seeing a lot this episode. opening on kong needing to vary his shots, seeing tsukimoto forced to work hard by giving him a bunch of different hits. and then the sensei beating him by exploiting his safe/comfortable/defensive/routine playstyle its interesting that when he unlocks its still very robotic. im not sure what to make of it im also not sure what to make of the ‘enter the hero’ thing that smile tries to do i hope the sensei isn’t dead lol. also doesn’t seem like tsukimoto learned his lesson. he locked in for his independence and he won. but the sensei seems to think the damage is done. the ball chases him and he can feel it. the sport will pull at him now that this has been tapped into. nobody had given him sufficient challenge yet. maybe now through more trials he will actually work hard/suffer and learn for it. pushing beyond the safety of playing for fun and being ‘good enough’ i can see how peco’s desire to be the best and not caring for the fun of the game other than winning will make a good foil
claude’s guiding qs why is smile still so robotic even when he plays well? its so counter to peco’s joy and passion for the game why is smile’s idea of safety so claustrophobic? whats with the restriction and darkness?
online discussion smile and peco are so different. surely just ping pong can’t be what keeps them friends. perhaps they secretly admire each other. the beach scene implies this. smile actually respects peco’s determination to be great. peco admires smile’s … not sure. maybe he’s grounding and stable ‘there are some views you cant understand until you’re at the top’ - really interesting. sensei implying that smile can’t understand what he’s missing bc he’s not committing to being better butterfly and smile felt forced to me. like way too obvious. he’s a happy carefree butterfly, but fragile. hasn’t weathered storms. this is in contrast to the eagle and the dragon guy smile seems to have showed annoyance more than exasperation with the sensei not being able to keep up. interesting that this came out when he unlocked, so to speak. ‘kill time until i die’. smile has such a shy perspective on the world. its like he’s afraid to interact with the world for fear of losing something by committing. good thing i am watching this.
ep 3 i feel like i’m missing something from this episode the most obvious thing in my mind is that tsukimoto clearly sandbagged again he realized what was at stake for kong from the yelling that he was receiving probably and just chose to lose the clear frustration everyone has with tsukimoto is he’s so obviously talented but can’t even capitalize on it because he doesn’t Actually believe in ‘just winning’ sure he crushed those other two kids on the way to playing against wenge but that was because he cared about winning so that he could play someone closer to his skill level i wonder why he put his wants above theirs in that situation. maybe he didn’t respect them? i wanna say that their motivations for playing were a lot weaker? like the third year guy seemed very aspirational/unserious in his goal and sort of folded immediately when he realized he was outclassed. not unlike what we’ve seen from smile but a very different shape? like much more resigned about himself than detached if that makes sense. or maybe he did gain some amount of desire to win? its interesting how he lost the first game in order to condition and download wenge we still don’t really know a lot about kazuma and the other guy who used to play with peko and smile obviously part of their interest is in recruiting him but they seem interested in his motivations? as well? we also haven’t really seen peko’s character as much anymore since the focus shifted to smile smile’s humming over the course of the winning, and then it stopped once he stopped trying to win. what’s that about, other than telegraphing what he’s doing. maybe the humming is related to the fact that he’s having fun/playing for fun? i liked the manga paneling of a lot of the shots in this episode but its not really clear to me what purpose exactly is served. i guess its nice to see multiple perspectives at once?
kong clearly gets tilted when he’s losing in a bad way talent doesnt just go to those who want it - quote devoting your life to ping pong is revolting - quote
claudes guidance smile seems to say playing is meant to kill time, which he shows when he plays in primarily chopping style. but i guess when he really Plays its when its actually fun even if he doesn’t want to admit that difference? smile he seems to sandbag to not hurt someone. if its self defense he’ll play well, like against koizumi (?). but against people who seem to attach their pride to the game he withdraws and plays worse? i think kong’s behavior makes a lot of sense. when he’s not as good as he thinks he is and its exposed he gets rattled. but its interesting he’d be chasing for someone who wants to give him a challenge if he gets rattled so quickly upon meeting that person and losing smile seems to consistently sandbag socially? to keep peko around/happy. when he realized that kong might be in danger if he doesn’t win this tournament. interestingly kong would say this is disrespectful, and the rest of the players would probably echo that sentiment. but he doesn’t care about the game he cares about people i think the hero seems to show up when there are personal stakes to him losing. but it goes away if he thinks the other person has more at stake
what does the hero represent and when has it been active. the game against koizumi was very like ‘smile is playing in machine mode’ but against kong even when he was trying it felt differently shaped? maybe the show just was not beating us over the head with it but maybe the hero thing wasnt happening
Reality always turns its cold shoulder to me. Well, I stuck with this longer than most things. Three years of plugging at it in my naturally gloomy way. Should i go to the beach? that’s not a bad idea” - Egami he seems resigned. like he sort of tried and is like ‘well guess im not cut out for this’. it feels reminiscent in a way im uncomfortable with. like ‘i stuck with it longer than most things’. if hes anything like me he’s searching for something
ep 4 ‘the only way to be sure you wont lose is to not fight’ i think the title of this episode is interesting to me because its not super clear how it connects i thought it would be about smile, and how his detachment from the game means he can’t lose i guess maybe it is, since we see how losing affects kong, and to a lesser extent peko especially for kong, i found it touching how his coach, as a friend, told him this means his life is just starting i wonder if its meant to be a sentiment of like ‘hey now you found out this wasnt for you, your opportunities and life paths have opened up again’ its kind of brutal, im not sure exactly what happened in china but clearly this loss to kazama basically just crushed his path back to china, at the very least very much the plane vs the dragon was a cool sequence, but i especially liked the snippets of how kazama towered like a titan over kong in the stylized version of the game it was clearly kazama in control the whole time i wonder if kong’s play was sloppy because smile’s control over his previous game rattled him this also reminds me of how kong said earlier that he didn’t feel like he was that talented. i guess this game was proof its interesting because kong should be easy to hate he’s arrogant seemingly without having earned it, and has disdain for japan and his opponents. when they prove him wrong he gets rattled/unstable and falls off but kong is a vulnerable character so i know about him. i know what motivates him, i can empathize with how he acts in his situation. like of course he has disdain for japan, he was literally exiled there as punishment. his outward disposition is a reflection of his inner suffering ‘I used to always dream that I lost my key. It’d be a relief to not have any more dreams where I’m the only one without a ticket.’ i dont know what this means but its provocative. it gets the people going. it evokes a feeling of ‘ive been worried about finding out that i wasnt really meant for ping pong this whole time. but now that i’ve lost it almost feels like a relief’ at least he can live with his mom again since he was 8?? no wonder he was feeling so much pressure to play ping pong well
kazama is still a less penetrable character. we don’t know what motivates him, how naturally talented he is i have no idea what bro was doing in the bathroom. with how much they emphasized his muscles and reaction time i wonder if he’s doping or something lol as the coaches (related somehow, related to the coach’s daughter and perhaps coach) he probably has a similar amount of pressure on him as kong but he seems less fazed by it? at least on the outside i wonder why he’s still trying to recruit smile. does he love the game of ping pong or want a challenge that badly?
we got a bit more of a glimpse of ‘demon’ or sakuma its interesting how a few characters sort of have their own nickname smile/tsukimoto, peko/?, sakuma/demon, kazama/dragon, kong/? sakuma vs peko was kinda interesting we’re seeing the pillars start to emerge of talent/environment/effort peko and smile are more raw talent, and sakuma seems to not be as naturally gifted, but orders of magnitude more effort he knows much more about the game, and is fighting hard to prove his place like he tells peko about how ping pong itself is changing, peko’s style is old and falling behind student of the game he consistently narrates during his match about how much it means to him to be able to beat peko, how much peko’s winning tormented him when he was younger their record is so in favor of peko. 24-96 or whatever. smile already was eliminated so we didn’t spend as much time with him im feeling this episode harder to feel out/analyze because it feels like we pivoted away from some of the themes we were developing before but thats probably a skill issue. i wonder if sakuma’s motivation will fall off now that he’s finally beaten peko
peko has now been humiliated multiple times recently i wonder if he will bounce back this time or start to change his ways
generally im super excited to see how these characters grow. i feel like i don’t even really know that much about them yet but even just learning about them has been interesting
‘talented people who know exactly who they are dont crave anything. those who dont know themselves are always the ones who struggle hardest to win because they want to prove a point’
ep 5
this episode felt a LOT less heavy than previous ones some things i noticed the guy who wanted to go to the beach wants to try the mountains next peko is putting on weight and seems washed lol smile seems to be trying a lot harder. i wonder whats changed in the time skip kazama seems relentlessly focused on kaiou being the best. whats his attachment to it? why is he recruiting smile so hard as to put down the rest of his team sakuma’s crash out is understandable but maybe a bit hard to relate to. i dont know that its clear to me why he lacks talent. sure the astigmatism is fair i guess but beyond that? why is he so much more ‘capped’ in his ability than the other characters? im not sure what the girl’s role is. i guess the family sells ping pong equipment which is why kazama has to be good at ping pong. but does he even like it? i wonder why kong decided to stay in japan to keep playing. the scenes with his mom were sad and made me text my parents. his mom sending him candy to reassure him even though shes growing old without him. sad. smile didnt beat kong in order to keep his ping pong dreams alive. why did he beat sakuma nobody seems happy right now. kazama talented and stressed. maybe smile is ok actually. kong’s stuck in japan and his coach is gone. peko is trying to quit. though i think the paddle floating at the end represents something. and sakuma literally not allowed to play anymore after beating someone up lol